This takes me to the polemic released after Instagram's Terms of Service change last month. Basically it gave Facebook the right to use pictures uploaded by Instagram users in their own promotions. This gives the ownership rights over the users pictures as soon as they are uploaded to their service.

I am am an avid photographer myself, I have been taking pictures since the film days and even though for me photography is just a hobby, I like to take good care of my craft, I value my pictures too much to give them away to a company that has enough money to pay professionals for their work.

So where do I have my pictures uploaded. Well, I don't have that many pictures on the web, mostly I have them on Flickr but I stopped using it over a year ago. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the community over there but I was starting to be overwhelm with too much noise, quantity over quality.

For some reason, a good number of Flickr users, used their account for storing their images, and they will upload 400 images of their walk on the beach where there are only three different images repeated over an over. This, together with the number of unimaginative stills of cats and dogs.

I would suggest that after the latest changes on Instagram and Facebook on copyright ownership, you upload all you pictures of cats, dogs, the burger you had for lunch or the nice art on the coffee foam you got on that fancy cafeteria.

This leaves us with the question, so do I only upload my nicer pictures to my site that not that many people will get to see? Or do I have another options? Well there are many options, that is for sure, I have been checking some of them the last couple of years, some of the communities I like are Behance, Smugmug and 1x.com

My final choice went to 500px. Their website is beautiful, it is very flexible when it comes to organize your galleries and the community is in general polite and knowledgeable. Also if you go through the Terms of Service you can read:

Your photos will preserve whatever copyright they had before uploading to this site. We will protect the copyright and will not sell your photos without your permission.

I have made up my mind now and I will get more of my images there, I really think I can be a better photographer with the feedback and comments from other people.

I have gotten an Awesome account and even though my pictures are still far from Awesome, they look good to me in there. I have also mapped a domain I own, mondaypics.com to my profile.

Something that is often disregarded when we design for web is that we design for people to use our designs. The concept I want to talk about today is greater than user experience, what I am talking about is the physical restrictions of the human perception. Being aware of the pros and cons of our perception and how our eyes and brain biases us, we can present a more effective designs to our users.

First lets learn the basics on how we see:

A good way to explain it is to think on a photographic camera, there is the iris (the lens) that will adjust to the levels of light, and there is a retina (a sensor or a film). Now we need to understand a little bit better how does our retina work. The retina keep most detail right on the center and it is inaccurate at the edges. For example, in peripheral vision, sometimes the interprets vision when there is none. The interesting thing is that the human visual system makes you "think" you have a clear image of the entire area, this works because at the time something in the peripheral area catch your attention, your eyes point right at it and the specific are turns into focus. The brain makes the work of putting together all these sharp images to display us with a sharper image than what we are actually capturing.

OK, now that this is clear, how does our retina capture the information? There are actually two kinds of captors, cone cells and rod cells. Oyster's textbook (1999) cites work by Curcio et al. (1990) indicating an average close to 4.5 million cone cells and 90 million rod cells in the human retina. There are three kind of cone cells (red, green and blue), therefore humans are trichromats and only one kind of rod cells and that one can only see shades of gray. The cone cells are mostly place on the center of the retina (foveal area) and the rod cells, mostly on the peripheral area of our retina. Also, as you can see we have twenty times more rod cells than cone cells.

Just as a side note, there are two unconfirmed cases of human tetracromats, just imagine how much detail could a tetracromat capture from reality (probably great design doesn't look that great on these peoples' eyes).

Apart of the different shades of gray, the rod cells also capture luminosity of the different areas of the image, this is why our vision is optimized for edge contrast not for brightness. A classic way to show this example is the image 1. You see The stars in the image appear having a different color because their background is different but they are in fact the same.

Image 1

To conclude this with a more extreme example, image 2, Edward H. Adelson from the MIT, developed an incredible image where the gray colors are the same in different squares of the image. It might seem incredible but those gray colors are exactly the same.

Image 2

This is one of the reason many web designers convert their key pages into black and white to check contrast to make sure the important calls to action are visible for the human eye.

On the image 2 I show you an example of an old landing page. You can see how the action we want from the users is very clear, and on a second hierarchy level there is the three step process with the illustrations.

Image 3

We will expand this topic in the future with details on peripheral vision and why do we need to know this when designing for the web.

Last week I watch a beautiful documentary about the craft of a 95 year old Japanese cook called Jiro dreams of sushi. There are so many lessons to learn from this documentary that I wanted to write them down for all of you.

Jiro owns a restaurant in Tokio that is considered but the experts the best sushi restaurant in the world. He have reached a level of perfection in his craft that can only achieve through extreme discipline driven by his love for the craft he practices. On the movie they explain that he already worked with food at the age of 9, now at 95 he had devoted an entire life to reach perfection (even though he thinks he is getting closer, he still believes he is far away from it).

This movie is very interesting because the philosophy can be applied to any other professional field. In his belief, you learn the "basic skills" to cook sushi after 10 years of devotion to the craft. This might sound a bit extreme but I totally agree with the statement, it takes a long time to understand in depth the work that you are committed to do. Some people might think that their job doesn't require 10 years to learn the basic skills, I would suggest to watch the documentary to realize how much you can improve in what you do every day.

The most important element is the passion that drives people to get better at what they do, a common thing among humans is to reach valley points in our learning process. As an example. just think on how many hours do you invest every day typing and are you getting better at it? In most cases you wont get better, this is because when you learn a skill you get to a position that makes you feel comfortable with how you perform and we stay there for good. Working on your craft daily, repealing the same tasks over and over is the way to achieve results in the long term.

The documentary, Jiro dreams of sushi, is named after Jiro tells the director that after all this time of dedication, some nights he dreams on different recipes that then he tries out and end up adding to the menu, he gets to expand his creativity having his subcouncious working in the night while at sleep, this is a fairly extreme way to improve at your work.

On this line, I would like to recommend a book that I found extremely useful. The author's name might be misleading because this is not a field he is know for but this is a gem for anyone that want to be a professional at anything. the book is "On writing" by Stephen King (and the audiobook link). In this book, he describes his creative process, and very few success people do ii as clear as he does. He is an extremely prolific writer an I always asked myself how these people get to produce so much quality work. He walks you through the process and is fascinating. If there is one lesson to take from the book is that you need to practice you craft daily, in his case, writing and reading .He invests a certain amount of time on reading every day and he also commits himself to write ten pages every day, some days it will take him a couple of hours, some other days it might take him into the night time, in any case, he does write his ten pages every day. I think the idea of setting up goals is of a mayor importance for our implication and focus. If you can, set up goals for every day, the personal fulfillment is also important here. Those of you that work on Agile environments will be familiar with this, having stories accepted and reaching the desired story points gives you a self confidence that you would not get otherwise.

As many of you know, managing fonts is one of the most cumbersome tasks designers face on a daily basis. I have been fairly happy with the software I have been using for the past years on my mac, FontExplorer X, but they stopped supporting the free version and they are having now a paid version, how could they?

First thing I wanted to set up my priorities, why do I need a third party font management software in the first place:

Activate / deactivate fonts easily without having to remove them from the folders.

Being able to store fonts in other places than the system folders.

Auto activation of fonts when launching specific software, not at booting.

Create font sets, keeping your clients / projects font sets separated is important, so that you can deactivate full sets when a project is over and you don't plan to go back to it in a near future.

With these premises I went ahead and amused myself with the quantity and quality of software specialized on font management. I was not aware that the fight for this (I thought) niche software was so interesting. I guess I will need some time to understand what is out there and what solution fits best to my needs.

The first software that grabbed my attention was Extensis Suitcase Fusion 4. You can say whatever you want but having a modern looking website it is a big plus when deciding on a software -at least on my case. I liked the way they presented the software and I found a few features that sounded very attractive specially foe working with web fonts.

Extensis owns a tool called WebINK with a similar functionality to Typekit but with some interesting features. You can drag and drop fonts to a site to see how do they look like, niiice!! Other feature that I have been waiting for some time already is integration of WebINK fonts with Photoshop via Suitcase Fusion 4, yes, you can design an interface and show your client how it will look like before even starting to code, double niiice!!

OK, suddenly Suitcase Fusion 4 is on top of my list, time to get a trial and start playing with it.

The first impression is very positive, fonts seem to load fast (I have a lot) and the activate, deactivate buttons are intuitive. It seems that we have the basics covered.

I started cleaning caches and fixing broken fonts and things seemed to workout fine, unfortunately next time I started it things started to go bad. Unexpected crashes and freezes that made me impossible to keep using the software, it might be something with the MacBook Pro with retina display (not bragging) that was messing up the software but I have no patience for these things, if we start having problems I decided to give up and move to the next option on my list.

Just to say, Suitcase Fusion 4 is $49.99 with is a fair price tag for such a tool. The next option was the FontExplorer X pro. Somehow I felt I should give a shot to the pro version of the software that served me so loyally for the past years for free, some sort of karmic compensation.

Well, after uninstalling Suitcase Fusion 4 and installing the FontExplorer X pro, bu the way, you don't want to have two font managemet software at the same time running on your computer, bad things might happen. First thing I realized was that the software is updated for the MacBook Pro with retina display (good), and the first step, loading fonts was the fastest I have ever seen, very very impressive. Also you can see that they have plugins for the latest CS 6 software, and you can from the interface to choose if you want to activate / deactivate the fonts on a specific application, optimizing resources, it works like a charm.

The features to group font in sets and to organize the fonts seemed comparable to the one in Suitcase Fusion 4, it all seems faster in FontExplorer X pro. At this point I was almost convinced, the price tag of $79.99 seemed a bit higher of what I would have liked but the software works perfect is fas and it has all the features I need, and some I very rarely will be using like the LinoType shop integration. The web features from WebINK sound very interesting but I have a license of Typekit that I will keep as long as they give it to me with the Adobe Creative Cloud package so I see it unlikely that I will switch anytime soon, I might go ahead and try it out and tell you how did it go.

​So much is being said these days about screen resolution, DPIs, PPIs, High Definition, Retina Displays, etc. Aside of the marketing jargon involved here there is a trending change that is affecting on how users (our users) are seeing the web.

I wanted to talk today about a software I have been using extensively the last few months to create high end Learning Objects, Articulate Studio ’09. I hope my experience helps people better decide to choose the right tool for the work.

Modern web design has been focusing on simplification. We spend many hours every day, every week, on the internet. We check for dry cleaners online, chinese restaurants, we research possible partners and so on. The first impression we receive from the company we want to know is very important, how many times you entered a site, puked and look for something else. The idea of this post is trying to have the users not to puke when they see your site for the first time.

I am going to give you a very simple example of a portfolio site, something clean and engaging. I have decided to divide this post into two parts, in this first part we will see the elements that the users will se “above the fold”. This will be the first impression of the user in your site so we need to have our ideas very clear.

First thing when designing a home page (as well as any other page on a website) we need to have very clear what is our target audience and what do we want them to do in our site. For this example, we are going to consider that we have a personal (or small agency) portfolio site.

I have segmented the users into two groups. One group, the smaller, but for me the most important, clients. Yes, this website will measure the success if we get our clients to the goal we have design for the site, have them to contact us for a quote. As you can see, the main button and principal call to action is the violet button in a prominent position. The color makes the button have the most contrast on the site and we drag the user attention to it. “If you are a possible client I want you to see it”.

My second group will be users of the site in general, other designer that want to see what am I showing on my gallery, writing about, or to get some freebies (freebies are always a good way to drive traffic to the site). To make this second group happy we have prepared three elements under the main block, I know this links we have them already on the top menu, but in my experience, users will click on the modules 70% more of the times.

This way we have prepare an easy to read, segmented home page for my two target groups. One quick note about the main module, the use of quotes is generally a good idea if done right. Quotes have to be believable, with a full name and position of the person as well as name of the company, to make it perfect, use a picture (all of that is wrong in my example though). It is proven that quotes will improve the trust on your company’s services and since my main goal is having clients to contact me for a quote, I need to support their decision of clicking the button with some facts.

I wanted to talk briefly today about image metadata for the web. I have been doing some research on this area and I have founded out that even though you can extract EXIF data and metadata from images on the web, there are currently no effects on indexing for search engines.

The EXIF and metadata are both binary code and need to be extracted in order to be interpreted by search engines. Also, it is believed that Google Algorithm can read the binary data from the images but there is no reason to believe that there is any impact on the indexing part. Will it have more weight in the future? Well nobody knows but I will throw my 2 cents and say that it will. Probably to start of with it will be the Copyright and Credit fields in IPTC Core and IPTC Extension (two metadata schemas developed by the IPTC for professional use with a focus on news and stock photos).

All right, so, if all of this lucks Google’s attention, why should we care? Well, first of all, if you are into stock photography (current digital cameras are making the number of stock photographers rise like mushrooms) it would be a good idea to set up your camera to embed your copyright information on every picture you take, so when eventually it reaches the internet you can have a way to track it in case someone is using it without your permission.

There are ways, of course to help Google index the metadata in your images, but this requires some extra effort, of course. The best way to do it is passing the metadata to a language that Google understands, HTML. You can use the image attributes alt, title and description to help Google index your pictures appropriately.

Add the filename to your metadata, the first think people do when they download an image is to rename it. Having the filename set in stone on the metadata will give you another way to find it.

Be smart when filling up your alt, title and description in the HTML when uploading an image, use metatags if you will in order to get Google to index your images properly.

Make sure when you export your images, you keep the metadata. This wont help your SEO at this point in time but it might make a difference in the near future, and you don’t want to re-upload all your images again, do you?

As a last note, I found this interesting website they search the web for your camera’s EXIF data and finds if someone is uploading any images to the web with it.

During the years I have come across many people that can only work listening to music. I have seen people working with any kind of music and I have to say it works well for the ones that chose to do so.

I like to work with certain music when I do certain tasks. I can’t deal with very loud or strong music while working (I know someone that likes to work listening to Swedish death metal). For me listening to music while working helps me to isolate from the surroundings. When working on an office is a good way to keep you focused on your work, sometimes I even put a headset on without music to send the message “hey, I am not listening to you right now”, this saves some distractions (but wont intimidate everyone, though).

So the point of this post is that I have been following up on two music services Spotify and Rdio and toying with the idea of joining one of them. When I lived in Samoa, it was not a choice because of bandwidth prices. Now, back to the US it looks like I would take advantage of one of these services.

I have taken the trial of both services (seven days) and started to test the Mac clients. I have used Spotify when it first came out in Europe and it hasn’t change much. When compared next to each other, there are some similarities, like suggestions or new additions to the collection. One thing that changes quite a lot is the navigation, in Rdio, you can find the play, stop, fast forward, etc. on the top of the app (it actually looks a lot like iTunes). On Spotify you find it on the down part, not sure if is because of being used to the iTunes system or mere usability, but it seems more natural to me to have the navigation on the top, also on Rdio you get on the top feedback on the song that is playing.

First thing I realized about the music collection (I have no idea which one has more tracks) is that there were more artists on Spotify that I like than on Rdio, better put. Some of the european artists that I like to listen to where not available yet on Rdio, mostly their latest albums. This is a bit of a bummer because one of the reasons to use the service is to listen to the latests additions of the groups you like. I have to say that after a few days looking for music, I have compensate a bit my first impressions and I am sort of ok now with what I get on Rdio even though I have to say that for me the selection on Spotify is still best.

Other point for me was that most of the people I know use Spotify and share Spotify links with playlists not Rdio, this is also an important point, not that I would care to share the music I listen to (I am not much of a 2.0 person on this sense) but I really like to tell friends to listen to some album or some artist as well as receiving advice from friends. Using the same service makes it obviously easier.

Audio quality is great, I have not been able to find a difference between the two of them.

Another important thing is the way you make lists on both applications. I have to say that the Rdio systems is cleaner for the way I use it. I like the idea of adding full albums or specific songs, and add the albums to my collection and songs to my lists. Also the way of creating and sharing lists is very easy. The system on Spotify works fine but it is not so user friendly.

The iPhone application. Here I hit a wall with Spotify, not their fault but mine... Problem is that I have an Spanish Spotify account and what is my surprise when I realize that since I own a US Apple Store account, I can download the client for my iPhone. Rdio application works all right, it crashes on me every once in a while (I assume is my iPhone since I have an old, rusty 3G), but still, quite some field of improvement there.

As you can assume, at this point in time my decision was made, I will stay with Rdio for the time being, wait for Spotify to launch in the US and see how it works over here. The issue is that with Spotify you need to pay for the premium service to use it outside of the country where you registered, and then I can’t use the service on the iPhone (which is half of the service already).

Well I will keep everyone updated on my experiences with Rdio, but I am loving it so far I hope the music industry don’t kill services like Spotify and Rdio. Music helps me focus, it inspires me, helps me work, relax, and laugh. For me, music are memories, I remember people, situations when I listen to music, for me it is a key way of collecting memories.

I am an avid reader. Or better put, I used to be, with modern life style you end up having too much time on the computer and not reading, at the end you only scan websites or blogs every once in a while. I am afraid a quick check in the Wikipedia doesn’t count as “reading”.

I always thought that I read a lot of blogs, but when I looked at my blog reading habits, I realized that I kept saving blogs post I found interesting on Evernote and never reading it again. I was thinking on how useful RSS are. Are there people really using them? An by using them, I mean, really reading the relevant blog posts?

I started a personal crusade in order to find the most beautiful RSS out there (if I have a pretty client, maybe I would look at my RSSs more often). On my research I found Fever, an RSS reader created by Shaun Inman. I seems that he encountered a similar problem and decided to create the “perfect” RSS reader. I have used Shaun’s Mint before and I thought it was a great tool so I decided to go ahead and purchase the RSS reader.

It is true, you have to purchase Fever, it is 30 dollars and it is a bit too geek for most people, but what it does is pretty awesome. You have to install the client on your own server, this way it gets updated without you noticing (wich is very handy). Fever has two very interesting features. First thing is that you can label your RSS in two categories, Kindling, where you put your “Must Have” RSS and Sparks where you put the rest (and as many RSS Feeds as you can, the more the better).

On this Sparks you have the best feature of Fever, it checks the posts on all your repository (and in the internet) and gives a temperature (like body temperature) the news that are relevant get higher temperature and the big news are so high that have fever. This is good because if you scan your hot sparks you can see what is very important and not miss it.

Having said this I usually dont read the posts on the Chill Pill client (natively reads Fever), I read some short posts, check out some photo blogs I like or comics, but not read the posts. For the posts I find interesting I add them to Instapaper and then I sync it on the iPad, here is where I read it, waiting at the doctor, or in the night before going to bed. I am glad that finally I found a way to read interesting blog post and keep myself up to date with all the cool stuff out there.